The invention relates to hand instruments used by dentists and dental hygienists.
Dentists use a variety of hand held instruments to place and remove material from teeth and gums. These instruments can be generally classified as carvers, filling instruments and placement instruments. Such instruments have an elongated, generally cylindrical handle and a working tip at one end or both ends. A variety of tips are available ranging from sharp wire tips to flat rounded spatula tips to blunt cylindrical tips. Generally, each tip is shaped to perform a particular function in examining or treating teeth. Wagner in U.S. Pat. No. 1,369,582 discloses a dental tool in which the tip is formed by an angular extension from the handle that is bent to form a rounded heel and terminates in a rounded, gradually tapered point. This tip is designed for manipulating, shaping and burnishing fillings and also wax used in taking wax impressions. U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,677 discloses a dental instrument having an elongated straight handle portion with a cylindrical plugger element on each end thereof. Each plugger element has a 45 degree bend adjacent the end of the handle and a 90 degree bend adjacent the distal end of the plugger element. Protruding laterally from the apex of each 90 degree bend is a burnishing element. The burnishing element on one end of the handle is ball shaped and the burnishing element on the other end is cone-shaped. This instrument is designed for placement and shaping of amalgam filling material. Mason discloses a hand held dental instrument having a ring at each end in U.S. Pat. No. 5,088,925. The ring is designed to be placed in contact with palatal tissue and serve as a guide for a needle that is inserted through the ring into the very center of the palatal tissue. These instruments and the many other dental hand instruments that have been available over the years were designed for specific purposes. They are quite useful for the limited purposes for which they were designed. Because of their limited scope there are many procedures in which several hand instruments must be used. There is a need for a dental instrument that is more versatile.
There is a pocket between the gingiva and the tooth. In a healthy tooth this pocket is very shallow, typically one to three millimeters. Bacteria colonize the pocket. This bacteria causes the pocket to deepen. As periodontal disease progresses the bacteria cause inflammation that destroys the ligament and bone creating depressions in the bone. I have developed a procedure in which certain materials are placed in the periodontal pocket to treat periodontal disease. During this procedure it is often necessary to pack gauze into the periodontal pocket. There are several hand dental instruments that I have used for this purpose. However, none of them has been entirely satisfactory. Many dental instruments have curved tips, but the curvature does not match the curvature of a patient""s teeth or the tip does not have a flat surface that can be used to press gauze into the periodontal pocket. Consequently, there is a need for a hand held dental instrument having a tip that contains curved edges matching the curvature of a patient""s teeth and a surface and thickness that enables the instrument to be used to press gauze into the periodontal pocket and between the teeth.
I provide a dental instrument having an elongated handle and a tip at one or both ends. The tip is a blade having a top surface, a bottom surface, opposite the top surface with contoured edges forming a shape similar to a human foot. Consequently, for ease of understanding portions of the edges of the blade are identified with reference to the human foot. A curved ankle edge extends from the handle to a heel shaped edge. The heel edge curves outward until meeting an arch edge. A toe edge extends from the arch edge, the toe edge having a V-shape with a rounded point. An instep edge extends from the toe edge to the handle. The ankle, arch and instep edges each have an inwardly curved shape. The curved shapes are of different depth and concavity. There is a shank portion between the blade and the handle with the angles between the shank and the handle and between the shank and the blade preferably being 150xc2x0 and 120xc2x0 respectively. These angles allow the user to reach all areas of the mouth. The blade is thin enough to allow the instrument to reach between the lower front teeth.
these and other advantages and features of the present invention will become more fully understood upon reference to the accompanying drawings illustrating certain presently preferred embodiment of the invention.